> The reality is that manual entry is even more error-prone, bias-prone, with more people falling through the cracks. It doesn’t have to be. But when it’s subj

> The reality is that manual entry is even more error-prone, bias-prone, with more people falling through the cracks. It doesn’t have to be. But when it’s subjected to the same incentives that produced this software and perpetuated its broken state, we should expect the result to be much the same. When you pull back and try to look at it with fresh eyes, our prison system is abjectly terrifying. It’s designed to funnel wealth to private entities, not to implement justice or rehabilitate criminals or whatever other worthy goal(s) you might imagine for it. This story (as horrifying as it is just by itself) is only one little corner of the monolithic perversity of the system as a whole, and the executive powers involved in steering that system are about as close to evil as you can find in the real world. The whole thing needs to be torn down and rebuilt. As long as it exists, it puts the lie to our claim of being a society that values freedom and justice. Circling back, I guess the point is that the ideas about how to do software in your last paragraph have no chance of being implemented in the system as it currently exists. To fix “systemic problems”, we will have to aim a lot higher with a much bigger gun.